UAVs and UGVs Robotics for Emergency Response in a Changing Climate

Dear Colleagues,

As climate change accelerates the frequency and intensity of natural and human-made disasters—wildfires, floods, landslides, industrial accidents—Europe faces mounting pressure to protect both its citizens and the first responders who risk their lives in emergencies. This Special Issue focuses on the emerging role of ground-based, aerial, or hybrid robotic platforms in safeguarding lives during high-risk operations.

Autonomous and semi-autonomous Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGVs), often working in swarm configuration with Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), are increasingly equipped to operate in degraded, unpredictable, and hazardous environments. These platforms can augment human skills, extend perception and reach, and take action in situations that are too dangerous or time-critical for people alone. From navigating collapsed structures to delivering medical payloads or sensing toxic conditions, such robotic systems have the potential to revolutionize civil protection efforts.

We invite contributions that explore innovations enabling rapid deployment, coordination, and resilience of unmanned vehicle systems under extreme conditions. This includes technological advances, but also systems thinking, field validation, and human-machine integration to ensure real-world applicability.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Swarm and collaborative concepts for First responders and Risk management
• Autonomous navigation in complex terrains
• Decision-support system tools for human-robot teaming
• UGV-based perception, manipulation, and terrain adaptation
• Real-time UAV-UGV coordination in multi-threat scenarios
• Deployable robotics for firefighting, flood monitoring, search and rescue, and hazardous materials assessment
• Ethical design, operational integration, and trust in robotic first responders
• Climate-driven risk scenarios and the role of robotics in emergency resilience

This Special Issue aims to sensitize researchers, policymakers, and civil protection actors to the urgency of robotic innovation in emergency response—toward a Europe that is safer, faster, and more resilient in the face of environmental extremes.

Dr. Abraham Mejia-Aguilar
Dr. Santos Miguel Orozco Soto
Dr. Christian Wankmüller
Guest Editors

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• unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs)
• unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs)
• robotics for hazardous environments
• disaster robotics
• human-robot teaming
• search and rescue (SAR)
• emergency response automation
• autonomous navigation
• real-time situational awareness